


they took your loved ones but returned them in exchange for you (you couldn't have it any other way)

by voxofthevoid



Series: tear me to pieces, skin to bone (hello, welcome home) [1]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Aroused Victim, Bucky Barnes as Captain America, Explicit Sexual Content, Face Slapping, M/M, Mindfuck, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Nothing is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, Rape/Non-con Elements, Restraints, Steve Rogers as the Winter Soldier, Suicidal Ideation, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:47:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23645617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voxofthevoid/pseuds/voxofthevoid
Summary: This isn’t his Steve. This isn’t Captain America, and this sure as fuck isn’t the little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight. This isn’t the Winter Soldier either, Hydra’s mindless machine.Whatever came out of all that, of the man who was all of those at some point in his life—Bucky’s not sure if it’s someone he wants to know.But it’s Steve.Steve reaches out, one bear paw of a hand reaching for Bucky’s face. Bucky grits his teeth and forces himself not to flinch. He’s expecting another blow, maybe fingers pushing into his mouth, but what he gets is a finger tracing the cleft in his chin—the spot his Steve used to love to kiss. Bucky shivers at the gentle touch, caught off guard and floundering. He’s only more unsettled when Steve’s hand settles on his cheek, big enough to cradle the entire side of Bucky’s face.“Pretty boy,” Steve murmurs. “Should I keep you?”-Captain America is sent to hunt down a ghost.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: tear me to pieces, skin to bone (hello, welcome home) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1702297
Comments: 161
Kudos: 707





	they took your loved ones but returned them in exchange for you (you couldn't have it any other way)

**Author's Note:**

> The poem quoted in this is [this beautiful piece](https://pencap.tumblr.com/post/152234073290/why-does-no-one-talk-about-used-to-bes-the) by _pencap_.
> 
> This is darker than my usual fare, so read the tags very carefully. Feel free to reach out to [my tumblr](https://voxofthevoid.tumblr.com/) with questions. Stay safe <3
> 
> The embedded images are by the very talented [kocuria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kocuria) 💖

“He’s a ghost story,” says Natasha, voice grave enough to almost pass as fear.

Or respect; it’s hard to tell with her sometimes.

“For a ghost, he’s been leaving a lot of holes in a lot of people,” comes Clint’s disembodied voice from where he’s knocking around under the table, looking for a slice of pizza he dropped. “Think Captain America can handle the guy?”

“Well, I don’t have much of a choice now, do I?”

Neither of them counters that with bullshit platitudes. There’s a reason he works well with them.

-

Bucky comes to with a crick in his neck and a throbbing headache. An attempt to move it brings a swirl of nausea, and he stills, discomfort rising as awareness of his body trickles in.

He’s in a chair, arms and legs bound to it with something thick and metal. Dismay accompanies realization—he can handle rope and even something stronger wouldn’t normally be a match for the metal arm and serum-enhanced strength. But metal’s harder, and his limbs feel sluggish, his mind hazy. He can’t remember how he got here. He doesn’t know who has him. He can’t even retrieve enough information from his roiling head to figure out who could possibly have overpowered him well enough to place him in this predicament.

“You’re awake,” a voice says, deep and distorted, though Bucky can’t tell if it’s a natural quality or a result of his hearing being shot. “Earlier than expected.”

“Wh—ah—"

He clicks his mouth shut, tongue a leaden, uncooperative weight. All his senses feel muddled. He can’t open his eyes; it hurts to try. There are footsteps echoing in his ears, but he can’t pinpoint the direction. His lips feel swollen like someone punched him in the mouth, and the inside of it tastes like something died in it and started rotting.

Drugs. He’s drugged. The serum nullifies almost everything and yet—

Something pricking his neck, pain exploding across the back of his head. Memories. Sensations without information to go with them.

“Well, maybe that’s giving you too much credit,” the voice says, close, too close. A hand grips Bucky’s jaw and tilts it sharply. He cries out, head pounding something fierce. The voice hushes him. “This will pass. For now, Captain, go back to sleep.”

 _Sergeant_ , Bucky’s mind supplies, the correction automatic even after two years of bearing a mantle that sits heavy and ill-fitting on his mismatched shoulders.

The hand on his face pulls back. He pries his eyes open, gritting his teeth against the pain.

There’s someone crouched in front of him, massive and hulking, silhouetted by the light from—from—

“Your friends are coming,” the person says. Bucky blinks rapidly, trying to see more than a mass of shadows. “This place has been compromised, thanks to you, but I can’t just leave you here, can I?”

There’s something—something in their hand, something they’re holding. Bucky blinks, forces his aching eyes to squint.

A syringe.

“N-no, _no_.”

Bucky’s eyeing the syringe, trying to twist away and failing to even twitch a muscle. The shadow chuckles, the sound low and edged with cruelty.

“That’s right. You came here uninvited. You can keep me company a while longer.”

The shadow leans in, and Bucky catches a glimpse of a strong, stubbled jaw, close-cropped hair, and piercing, impossibly familiar blue eyes.

“S-Steve?”

But Steve’s dead, fell into the snow, Bucky’s fault, all his—

The shadow leans in, touches Bucky, and he doesn’t touch like Steve, it’s too impersonal, fingers light on Bucky’s neck.

A sharp pain under his jaw, and he slips under without so much as a whimper.

-

Bucky’s alone when he wakes. He doesn’t know how he knows that, doesn’t think it’s possible that he registered enough of that shadowy presence in his drugged state to note its absence, but he knows all the same.

He’s also naked, not a scrap of fabric on him. No weapons either, except for his left arm, which is stretched above him along with his right, shackled to—he trains his neck, trying to catch a glimpse of what’s above him—a fucking hook in the ceiling. Thick metal chains are keeping him suspended, only his toes able to touch the ground. It _hurts_ , sudden and pulsing, like his body was only waiting for him to notice before assaulting him with the aches.

The room’s empty, the only source of light a bright bulb on the wall opposite of Bucky. He twists and turns, ignoring the burn in his legs and arms, to try and look behind him. There’s a set of stairs leading up to a steel door.

He’s in a basement. A clean, empty basement that doesn’t overtly scream ‘murder dungeon’ but gives that impression anyway. Maybe it’s Bucky’s particular position that’s giving him such ideas, but all things considered, it’s justified. You don’t treat people like trussed up turkeys without ill-intentions—either that or some heavy consensual kink, and it sure as hell ain’t that here. The last—and only—person allowed to do that to Bucky is buried in the snow.

There’s an empty grave that Bucky hasn’t visited and never will. Steve’s not there. He’s nowhere.

He quickly steers his head away from a train of thought saved for miserable nights spent crying into his pillow. He’s got other concerns now.

His mind’s clear, or at least clearer than the last time he woke up. He sure as hell remembers how he got here.

He was hunting the Winter Soldier.

Natasha’s ghost who left her with a scar and a smile that tilts in all the wrong ways. Hydra’s pet assassin, right until he turned on them. And wasn’t that a shock, being thawed and told that Hydra survived Steve’s sacrifice and Bucky’s vengeance. There wasn’t much of them left by the time they found Bucky in the ice. Whatever they did to the Winter Soldier, it was enough to earn them his rage and violent retribution. Bucky has killed a few stragglers that seemed suicidally attracted to the new Captain America, but he was numb when he took the shots and threw the shield.

Once, he swept through Hydra’s bases with fire in his veins and screams stuck in his throat as he avenged the man he loved, the man who died so Bucky would live.

Bucky would have been fine hearing that he died for nothing because the only person he wanted to die for left him behind a long time ago. But it was another matter entirely to know Steve’s sacrifice was in vain.

Bucky’s got no beef with the Winter Soldier, personally. But S.H.I.E.L.D—or what remains of them after the Winter Soldier killed Secretary Pierce, tore through over half of their bases, and left behind evidence of the rot within—is less keen about an assassin like him running free, especially now that he seems to be done with Hydra and has taken to mercenary work.

He remembers hunting the Soldier across five states before losing his trail, finding it again, and following it to Italy. He remembers an apartment, small but well-maintained, and Natasha’s voice in his ear, warning him to be careful.

He _was_ careful. Clearly, it wasn’t enough.

It’s harder to recall what happened after the Soldier ambushed him in the apartment. He knocked Bucky out. Drugged him. He woke up, once, in the same apartment, tied to a chair.

He doesn’t know how long it’s been since then. It feels like a dream, the kind that flits out of your grasp the harder you try to hold on.

There was a person cloaked in shadow. Huge and looming. Blue-eyes.

Bucky called him Steve.

If he could, he’d slam his metal fist against his head. As it is, he just growls at himself, yanking fruitlessly at his restraints. It’s not the first time he’s chased a strong jawline or a set of broad shoulders across streets, hoping against hope because if Bucky survived a plane crash and seventy years in the ice on Zola’s second-rate serum, then Steve could have maybe, possibly—

It was never him. Of course it wasn’t. Just some pretty guy. One memorable time, it was a famous actor with an eerie likeness to Steve, who’d played him in more than one dramatic, tragic movie. Bucky was so tempted to fall into bed with the guy and _pretend_ , but he didn’t.

It was always in the eyes, is the thing. No one has Steve’s eyes. That impossible skyshine blue.

Bucky’s disappointed in himself for looking at a killer’s eyes and seeing his Steve. It feels like betrayal. Like dishonoring Steve’s memory.

Steve wouldn’t approve of the Winter Soldier. He would understand the vengeance. And it must be vengeance, the way the Soldier dismantled Hydra with extreme prejudice. But Steve wouldn’t approve of killing for money. Bucky’s a lot more magnanimous about the whole thing, but he’s like that all the time now. Natasha says he’s numb. Bucky says he can’t be Bucky Barnes and Captain America at the same time, and he made a choice, so to hell with Bucky Barnes and what he thinks, what he wants.

 _He_ wants—

The door opens. Footsteps down the stairs. Heavy, thudding—the kind you make when you’re not trying to hide.

Bucky looks over his shoulder and sees a figure in black. The Soldier is huge, his bulk not a product of Bucky’s drug-addled mind. He’s dressed casually, in sweats and a tee, but his face is hidden behind the same mask and goggles that’s been in every blurry picture they’ve acquired of the Soldier. They look incongruous with his homely outfit, and it’d be hilarious if it weren’t so terrifying.

The Soldier comes to a stop in front of Bucky.

Even with his face—his eyes—hidden, it’s hard to see how Bucky could ever have thought this guy was Steve. His hair’s the wrong color – blonde and cropped close to his scalp, darker than Steve’s sun-touched locks. And sure, Steve was a big guy after the serum, but the Soldier looks like his muscles each eat a kid every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

It's a funny thought, twisted yeah, but Bucky laughs, the sound scraping his throat like sandpaper.

“Am I amusing you?” The Soldier asks, and his voice comes out distorted by the mask. He remembers something deep and raspy from when he woke up in the chair.

“Sure, pal,” Bucky chokes out. “You’re a real riot.”

“How are you feeling, Captain Barnes?”

“It’s Sergeant. Captain America or Sergeant Barnes. Take your pick. Don’t fucking mix the two.”

There’s a considering silence from the Soldier, and hey, maybe Bucky shouldn’t curse at his captor, but he’s kind of out of fucks to give. He left them all in a train hurtling through the Alps.

“Noted,” says the Soldier, somehow managing to sound amused through the voice-filter on his mask. “How are you feeling, Sergeant Barnes?”

“Like shit. My legs are on fire, and my right arm feels like it’s going to tear off. Your hospitality sucks. Why don’t you untie me, make me feel a bit better?”

“But I remember you having quite the preference for being tied up.”

Bucky’s mind blanks.

“Excuse me?” he asks numbly. No one knows—no one can. He hasn’t had more than very vanilla one-night stands in this century, each one leaving him more and more hollow inside.

The Soldier approaches Bucky, his strides sure and effortlessly menacing. Bucky tries to sway out of reach, but a strong arm snakes out to grab him by the throat and he loses what little leverage he had, hanging for a moment from the hand on his neck. He chokes, gasping for air, and it’s the Soldier who grabs him by the hips and helps steady him.

He lets Bucky go, and this time, he doesn’t try to lean away. He’s frozen instead, hardly daring to breathe as the Soldier reaches for his own face.

The mask goes first, revealing pink lips and a strong, stubbled jaw. Bucky’s never seen Steve with anything more than a five-o'clock shadow. He could never grow body hair before the serum, and after, he was almost religious about shaving, even when they were balls-deep in enemy territory.

The Soldier reaches for the goggles, and Bucky’s heart is thundering in his chest, and he wants to reach out and stop him, wants to rip off the goggles himself, wants to run far away from here and never stop, wants to never have woken up at all.

The goggles fall to the ground, and Steve Rogers stands before Bucky Barnes.

A slap snaps Bucky’s head to the side. The pain takes a moment to register, and when it does, he barely flinches, eyes refocusing on the Soldier’s face.

Steve’s face.

Not a trick of the flight or born of wishful thinking.

Steve Rogers is the Winter Soldier.

“Steve,” he says numbly. “ _Steve_. You—you’re alive. You’re really—”

“Ssh,” Steve hushes, thumb stealing across Bucky’s mouth while the other four fingers of his hand span across his throbbing cheek. “You checked out for a minute there. I wondered, if you knew. I have my answer now.”

“I didn’t know,” Bucky says numbly, lips moving against the pad of Steve’s thumb. “Of course I didn’t—I’d have looked for you, Steve, you know I would have.”

“Do I?” Steve asks mildly.

“Ste—”

He sees the blow coming this time, but there’s nothing he can do and nowhere he can run even if he were willing to. A matching bruise throbs to life on his other cheek. Hands grab his hair and force him to look Steve in the eye.

“I didn’t say you could speak,” is what Steve says, the words almost absent as he touches the spot where he slapped Bucky. “I dream of this.”

Bucky almost opens his mouth again, but a warning squeeze of Steve’s hand on his jaw stops him. There’s a cold weight in his belly that screams something has gone horribly wrong. He’s had a million, impossible reunion fantasies ever since he woke up in this century. Sure, Steve blamed him in a few of them. But he always forgave Bucky because Steve always did, because Bucky was desperate for it. None of them were like this, Steve clad in a monster’s skin, his eyes like shards of ice. Beautiful all the same and so solid that it hurts.

“Steve Rogers. The original Captain America. Hydra was very pleased when they got their hands on him.”

“ _Him_? It’s _you_.”

Steve flicks his mouth none too gently. Bucky flinches instinctively, but the slap doesn’t come.

“Quiet. You’ve talked enough. And yes, Barnes, I know it’s me. I’ve seen the pictures, heard the tales. Imagine it, won’t you? Hydra’s glee at turning Captain America into the their perfect weapon. You should have heard Zola patter on, right until I burned him out of existence, byte by byte. He used to say I was a much better prospect than the inferior model. I assume he meant you.”

Zola. God, of course, Zola was in on it. He wanted Bucky, in Azzano, wanted to take him out but couldn’t because Steve came for him, Steve saved him, and then Steve died for him. Except he didn’t, and Hydra got him, and Zola—

“Stop that,” Steve snaps, gripping Bucky’s face bruisingly. “Breathe, Barnes. The drugs should be out of you by now. I want you clear-headed for this.”

Bucky doesn’t what it is about that particular line that drives it home. Maybe it’s the brusque emptiness of it. The lack of care to Bucky’s panic. Steve was a lot of things, and he had violence in his bones in a way Bucky never did, but he was never cruel, never hard.

“You don’t remember.”

Steve smiles and it looks _proud_ , like Bucky’s his puppy that did a very clever trick.

“No, I don’t. I dream. Faces of people I’ve never seen. Except you. You’re always there. Bucky Barnes and Steven Rogers. Best friends since childhood. Inseparable on both schoolyard and battlefield. Rogers sacrificed his life for his best friend, and Barnes carried on his captain’s legacy. The amount of sentimental drivel I’ve seen and read about Captain America and his Sergeant has rotted my brain, Barnes. It only got worse after they found you in the ice. But I don’t dream in red-white-blue patriotism. You want to know what I dream of?”

Bucky stands there frozen, the pain in his body forgotten in favor of the howling in his mind.

“Answer me,” Steve—the Soldier, _Steve_ —growls, digging his fingers cruelly into Bucky’s cheeks.

“Yes,” he whispers numbly.

“I dream of this,” Steve says readily, fanning his palm across Bucky’s swelling cheek.

“Your mouth, swollen from my teeth.”

A thumb pressing in on Bucky’s lips, threatening to slip inside before withdrawing.

“Your chest, striped and marked, red and blue.”

Fingers twist his nipple, and Bucky arches in spite of himself, pushing his chest into the fleeting pain.

“Your dick, your ass, your pretty hole stuffed with my cock.”

One large hand cups Bucky’s limp dick, the other reaching behind to grope his ass. It’s a possessive touch, and there’s nowhere to run, Steve’s strength keeping Bucky right where he wants him, and Bucky’s almost grateful because he knows he should flinch away but doesn’t know if he would.

Steve lets go of him and steps back, and Bucky sways in spot, barely held up by his weak knees. His arms ache something fierce, the metal grinding as he relies on it for support more and more.

“I dream of you in pain, Bucky Barnes, and I dream of you begging me to hurt you more. I dream of liking it, the sight of you bruised and desperate, mine to use as I wish.” Steve tilts his head to the side, the motion eerily predatory. “I’ve wondered about them. Wondered whether Hydra put them there. But seeing you, like this now. I know they didn’t.”

Bucky ducks his head so Steve won’t see the truth on his face. It’s not that he’s not ashamed of what they did together. He enjoyed it, Steve enjoyed it, and fuck anyone who would judge them. But he doesn’t trust this strange, terrifying Steve to take something that was real and true and twist it into something tainted.

And he doesn’t trust himself not to fall into it anyway.

“What would the world think of this martyred hero, Barnes, if they knew what he was really like?”

It’s laughably transparent provocation. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.

“Steve is a hero,” he snaps, leaning forward as far as he’s able in a vain attempt to get into Steve’s personal space. “He’s the best man I know. He always fucking will be.”

“Present tense already,” Steve says, lifting an eyebrow. “Tall words, Barnes. Have you forgotten who I am and why you were hunting me?”

Bucky doesn’t know how to counter that. The list of the Soldier’s kills is burnt into his mind, and not all of them are Hydra. Not nearly.

“You turned on them,” he says anyway, though his voice sounds weak to his own ears. “You stopped Project Insight. You saved the world, Steve, _again_.”

“I turned on Hydra because they tortured me, hurt me, used me, and I wanted revenge. And I exposed them because there was no easier way to have the world hunt them down. Made my job easier, kept them off my back. I was never trying to save anyone, Barnes. And I sure as hell ain’t doing that now.”

“But—”

“Hush. This isn’t getting us anywhere. I took you with me for a reason.”

 _But you dreamed of me_ , Bucky wants to say, uncaring how pitiful it sounds. He has to believe it means something. Steve did survive. He’s here, and he doesn’t remember, but he knows Bucky.

It has to be enough.

But there’s a look on Steve’s face, a familiar streak of stubbornness, that tells Bucky how useless it would be to try and appeal to him now.

“Why am I here then?” he asks instead.

“You’re hanging from a ceiling in chains, Sergeant. Take a wild guess.”

“Interrogation? You know better. You won’t get shit out of me.”

“You sure?” Steve smiles, and it’s nothing like any expression Bucky has ever seen on him. It sends chills down his spine. “I can be very persuasive. And with you, Barnes—I’ll enjoy it a hell of a lot.”

“Hate me that much, huh?” Bucky asks, bitter but resigned to it. He gets it, alright? It’s his fault Steve fell. It’s his fault Hydra captured Steve, tortured him, and oh god, it can’t sink in now, he can’t, he—

“Not at all,” Steve says, shocking Bucky out of his thoughts. “Hate’s not in the equation. No, I find you fascinating.”

“What? Steve—”

“I want to make you scream,” Steve says, serious, with a weight to his words that settles heavily in Bucky’s gut. “I want to see if they match the ones I hear in my dreams.”

Bucky closes his eyes, needing to escape that expression on Steve’s face. The _hunger_ , twisted and intent.

“You don’t want to do this, Steve. This isn’t who you are.”

“Who we are is a trick of fate. Who we become—that’s the choice. And I made mine.”

Bucky just shakes his head, swallowing another denial, well-aware it will fall on deaf ears but tempted to yell and scream until the words sink into Steve’s brain. He doesn’t want to imagine what Hydra did to take everything good and powerful about Steve Rogers and turn him into this. He’s scared he’ll find out anyway.

“How did you find me?” Steve asks.

Bucky hangs his head, looking away from Steve to make this reality a little easier to swallow.

“Who was the voice on the comms?”

He must have heard Natasha. Serum-enhanced hearing. Bucky vaguely recalls Steve moved him from the apartment because it was compromised. Bucky was wearing trackers. Natasha must have been able to find him. But now he’s naked, and he’s got the sinking feeling that Steve stripped and disarmed him there at the apartment itself. Nothing anymore to trace Bucky with.

“Who else is after me?”

“Why were you looking for me? Assassination or capture?”

“Is it S.H.I.E.L.D or the Avengers?”

“Why did you come alone?”

The questions continue. Steve doesn’t sound like he’s expecting any answer, but each succeeding question sounds a little more impatient than the last. Bucky says nothing, just looks down at his feet, the straining muscles of his dangling legs. Everything hurts but he can take it. He’s had worse.

Eventually, Steve runs out of patience.

At least, he wants Bucky to believe he’s run out of patience. He doesn’t know anymore. Aside from the suspension, this hasn’t been much of an interrogation. Just Steve circling him and throwing questions at him. Bucky’s done worse, so much worse, in the war to spare Steve the same. The technique is laughable, but that’s not reassuring at all.

“Look at me, Barnes,” Steve says in a voice that brooks no argument.

And the thing is—Bucky _wants_ to obey. It’s Steve asking, and Bucky’s spent so long following him, listening to him, that it’s become ingrained in a way he doesn’t want to lose.

But he keeps his head down. Keeps his breaths calm. Lets his hair hide his face.

It doesn’t take long for Steve to approach him.

He’s not particularly cautious about it. Sure, he doesn’t have to be with how strong he is and how Bucky’s limp in his chains, but it’s still careless. Natasha keeps telling him you can never be too paranoid, and Bucky doesn’t disagree.

He stays still, makes himself look weak, and doesn’t so much as twitch when Steve grabs him by the hair and forces Bucky’s head up. He stares blankly at Steve until he huffs in frustration and steps closer, leaving almost no space between their bodies.

Bucky twists into action with an almighty heave that sends pain flaring through every fucking muscle. He wraps his legs around Steve, using his sturdy body to take the weight off his arms. He slams his head into Steve’s nose, hears a familiar crunch. Any satisfaction he feels is marred by guilt because this is _Steve_ , and Bucky has never wanted to hurt him, but he doesn’t have time to wallow. A broken nose won’t stop Steve for long.

Bucky takes advantage of the moment Steve is plaint between his legs to yank at the chain with all of his metal arm’s considerable strength. It creaks and groans, plaster raining down on him.

A low, dark chuckle cuts through all other sound.

“There you are,” Steve murmurs, and Bucky freezes in spite of himself. “That’s better.”

There’s a quiet click, then _pain_.

Bucky screams, writhing away from the pain, but there’s nowhere to go, his left arm’s on fire, and it hurts god it hurts it hurts it _hurts_ _it hurts_ –

It stops as suddenly as it started, and Bucky goes limp in the chains, this time for real. He vaguely realizes he unwrapped his legs from around Steve in his frenzy to escape the pain, but Steve’s still there between his legs, keeping Bucky hoisted against his body with one tree-trunk arm around his waist.

Bucky breathes shakily, still trembling from whatever Steve did to his arm. It doesn’t hurt anymore, feels strange and numb where it hangs uselessly, not even responding as Bucky tries to twitch a finger.

He opens his eyes and finds Steve’s bloodied face far too close to his own. As if he was waiting for Bucky to look at him, Steve reaches up with the arm not around Bucky and sets his nose with a brutal, practiced motion.

Bucky’s the one who flinches.

“I can see what I saw in you,” he tells Bucky, and then he—he pulls him closer to his body, leaving Bucky no choice but to acknowledge the erection pressing against his crotch.

Steve’s hard and huge even through his sweats, and a minute twitch of his hips rubs his cock against Bucky’s own soft one. Ice creeps into his blood, into his heart, sharp with horror.

“No.” Bucky shakes his head, eyes squeezed shut like he can will this away. “No, don’t, I don’t wanna—Steve, don’t do this, I don’t wanna do this.”

The only answer he gets is Steve’s cock grinding into his with intent. Bucky doesn’t want to, doesn’t want Steve like this, but it’s soft fabric and pleasant friction, and he’s filling up despite the screaming in his mind, his body betraying him.

He's still shuddering from the pain, and the spikes of pleasure blend with the aftershocks in the worst best way, coiling tight in his gut as Bucky bites his lips against the sounds that want to escape. Steve’s touching him now, one hand holding Bucky up against him while the other wanders his body, flicking a nipple, stroking his belly, digging almost painfully into his ass, thumbing dryly at his hole.

It’s too much, all that sensation and so much confusion, and Bucky can’t help it. He whines, low and pained, and begs again, pleading for Steve to stop, to not do this, not like this.

Steve grabs his hair, pulls his head back, and puts his mouth to Bucky’s neck as he forces them to grind together.

Bucky’s hard now, getting a little wet at the tip, and there’s a matching damp spot on Steve’s sweats. Teeth sink into his throat, pain lanced with pleasure breaking him wide open, and it’s all Bucky can do it bite back a sob. He can’t think of _before_ , of all the times they’ve done this; if he does, he’ll—god, he’ll—

Steve licks over his pounding pulse, sucks hard at a spot that makes Bucky’s toes curl, and he _can’t_ –

All it takes is the sharp sting of teeth and a clever roll of hips and Bucky’s coming, spilling wetly between their bodies. It shudders through him, unwanted, overwhelming pleasure, and leaves him panting against Steve, boneless and slumped, hating it even as he leans into the strength of him, letting himself be supported in a way he’s never allowed anyone to since before he put the Valkyrie down.

Steve doesn’t stop once Bucky comes, just keeps grinding into him, chasing his own climax with teeth bared against Bucky’s neck and fingers bruising his skin. It’s too much, each roll of Steve’s hips pushing soft fabric and hard muscle against Bucky’s softened, sensitive dick, sending ripples of agonizing sensation up his spine. He arches in his chains, trying to get away and failing, held tight by Steve’s mouth on his throat and hands on his hips.

When Steve comes, it seeps through his sweats into Bucky’s skin, mingling with the mess already there. He twitches at the sensation, a low keen slipping past his lips as Steve stills against him, not making a single sound as he rides it out.

He lets Bucky go afterward, and he staggers with a cry, pain flaring once again as his body struggles against the strain. His left arm’s still useless and can’t take his weight like before. Bucky strains to put his feet on the floor, and maybe he yanked hard enough earlier to loosen the chains some because he can almost manage it, only his heels hovering above solid ground. Bucky hangs his head and tries to breathe through the pain—to put it away, ignore it, because he can’t afford to be lost to it now.

When he opens his eyes, he finds blood on his sternum. Steve’s blood, blood Bucky spilled, smeared on his skin, bright red against pale flesh. He feels _marked_ , like the stain has seeped into his soul.

When he lifts his neck, it’s to find Steve staring at him with an expression Bucky can’t categorize but terrifies him at some deep, primal level.

This isn’t his Steve. This isn’t Captain America, and this sure as fuck isn’t the little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight. This isn’t the Winter Soldier either, Hydra’s mindless machine.

Whatever came out of all that, of the man who was all of those at some point in his life—Bucky’s not sure if it’s someone he wants to know.

But it’s _Steve_.

Steve reaches out, one bear paw of a hand reaching for Bucky’s face. Bucky grits his teeth and forces himself not to flinch. He’s expecting another blow, maybe fingers pushing into his mouth, but what he gets is a finger tracing the cleft in his chin—the spot his Steve used to love to kiss. Bucky shivers at the gentle touch, caught off guard and floundering. He’s only more unsettled when Steve’s hand settles on his cheek, big enough to cradle the entire side of Bucky’s face.

“Pretty boy,” Steve murmurs, almost too quiet to hear but only almost.

Bucky freezes, heart slamming against his ribs, lungs desperate for more air than he can give them.

Steve’s thumb slides across Bucky’s parted lips, tugging teasingly at the bottom one. Bucky feels like a rabbit caught in a trap, everything in him screaming at him to run but his body helpless to even twitch away from Steve’s touch.

“Should I keep you?” Steve asks, and there’s a blur of motion, a piercing sting at his neck, and the world goes black.

-

Bucky’s dreaming.

He’s in a bed, he’s naked, there are hands on him, shifting him to their liking, and there’s Steve hovering beside the bed, blue eyes bright on Bucky. It’s a dream. All his dreams are of Steve, and they’re the only place he can see Steve now.

Bucky likes it, doesn’t care that he knows it’s not real. There’s a hazy quality to the world like this, everything blurred and blunted, nothing quite real except for Steve and the warmth of his touch.

He reaches for Steve and makes a low, mournful noise when his hand is caught in a tight grip before he can touch Steve’s face.

“Don’t, Barnes.”

Bucky frowns, trying to squint and focus, and failing. It’s Steve voice, Steve’s hand, Steve’s face, but for all Bucky’s sure of it, he can’t focus on any of it. He blinks and blinks, but it doesn’t work.

“Steve? Hey, why are you so far away?”

The grip on Bucky’s wrist doesn’t loosen, but the Steve-shaped blob leans closer, allowing Bucky’s fingertips to brush the side of his jaw. He can’t feel much with that hand, just pressure and faint warmth, and Bucky feels cheated for having his metal hand in the dream too. Sometimes, he has his old one. The one that Steve used to hold but couldn’t hold onto him when he really needed Bucky too.

Maybe it’s right that he lost it. He should have died.

“Do you know who I am?” Steve asks, and Bucky laughs because it’s silly, Steve’s silly.

“You’re Steve.”

“Hmm. Do you know where we are?”

“We’re in a dream,” Bucky answers readily because he doesn’t want to lie to Steve. He never liked lying to Steve. “You’re always here, in my dreams.”

Steve leans a little closer and his features are still indistinct, but Bucky can see his eyes so clearly, gets a little lost in the blue. He leans in without meaning to, heaving his body up to press against Steve’s. He’s solid, here, the way he never is when Bucky’s awake and drowning in memories.

Bucky has to kiss him.

There’s something strange, something wrong, about kissing the Steve in his dreams, and Bucky can never tell what it is, even when he’s awake, only that he doesn’t taste right, doesn’t feel right, but Bucky can never remember either—the way he used to taste, the way he used to feel. He just knows it, deep in his soul, knows when it’s wrong.

This is wrong too, Steve’s mouth too still, the skin too rough, but when Bucky flicks his tongue out for a taste, the shape of Steve’s lips is the one carved into his bones.

Hands grab Bucky’s shoulder and lower him on the bed. It’s dark, and Bucky realizes he’s closed his eyes, and he tries and he tries, but he can’t open them.

His mouth is wet and when he licks his lips, he tastes salt.

“Steve?”

A pause. Fingers press a little deeper into Bucky’s shoulders.

“I’m here.”

“I don’t want to wake up.”

“And why is that?”

“You won’t be there, when I wake.”

Steve laughs, and that’s wrong too. A sound like that could never come out Steve’s mouth, but it’s his voice, deep and making something inside Bucky tremble helplessly, aching.

“I promise I will be.”

Bucky wants to protest, but he can’t open his mouth, and there’s a weight behind his eyes that growing heavier and heavier, pulling him down somewhere. He tries to hold on to Steve—to the sound of his voice, to the shape of his mouth, to the heat of his hands—but it’s a losing battle and Bucky’s fading.

Before the dream shatters, he thinks he hears Steve say:

“But I can’t promise you’ll want me there.”

-

It’s funny how quickly you can get used to waking up naked and tied up. At least he seems to be in a bed this time.

Bucky strains against his shackles automatically, only to freeze when someone sighs from beside him. He turns his head slowly and finds Steve perched on the edge of the bed, idly cleaning a long, serrated knife. Zero points for subtlety but plenty for intimidation. He’s still all in black, casual except for the coiled way he holds himself, like an animal about to spring. His face is bare, masks and goggles gone. The room they’re in looks like a normal bedroom, not the eerily bare basement of before.

Yet, the whole thing somehow feels more dangerous.

A corner of Steve’s mouth lifts in an expression that’s not quite a smirk but comes close.

“You don’t look as happy to see me as you were—" He checks his watch, head tilted curiously at the dial. “—around seven hours ago. I did warn you.”

That tugs at something in his memory, and Bucky lets himself chase it because he already knows he won’t escape, not yet at least.

It’s easy enough to remember the dream, mostly because it wasn’t a dream. He gets why he thought so, drugged and addled as he was. He hates that he gave so much away. That he kissed Steve.

Looking at him now, he realizes the kiss felt so strange because of the beard. It’s little darker than when Bucky last saw him, rough but trimmed to perfection.

“How long have you had me?”

“A few days,” Steve replies easily. “You were out for most of it. You woke up a few times, mostly to shit and piss. Very sweet for me each time.” A smile, small and wicked. “I fed you. Even held your dick for you once or twice. Ain’t that nice of me?”

Bucky categorically refuses to process that.

“How long since the basement?”

“Two days. It takes a long time for these sedatives to wear off. Thought it would take less time with you, but I guess Zola’s serum really was subpar.” Steve chuckles, then all humor leeches out of him in a way that suggests not an ounce of it was real. “You gonna try and escape, Barnes? Break my nose again?”

Steve’s nose is already healed. Not a trace of blood on him. Nor on Bucky. The semen has been washed off too.

He tries to think of Steve giving him a fucking sponge bath while he was asleep. The image is incongruous and more than a little terrifying.

“You can’t keep me here forever. They’ll come for Captain America.”

Steve cocks his head. He does that a lot, the motion eerily animalistic.

“Not Bucky Barnes?”

“Bucky Barnes is a sorry shit who didn’t have the decency to die when he should have. But Captain America is bigger than him.”

Steve looks at him for an unsettling amount of time. Bucky fights not to squirm in place, hyperaware of his nakedness and what happened last time, how utterly at Steve’s mercy he was. Still is. His hands clench into fists, and the metal plates recalibrate with a series of clicks, pulling Steve’s attention to it.

“Behave now,” he warns mildly and gets up.

There’s a moment of panic that Steve’s going to leave him like this, followed by tentative hope, but Steve just goes to a corner of the room and returns with the shield hanging from his hand.

Bucky’s heart seizes painfully at the sight—Steve’s not holding it awkwardly by the edge or bunching up the harness. It sits on his forearm like it always has, a glorified frisbee given gravitas and grace.

How many times has Bucky stared at him while he held the shield just like this, feeling fond and furious and a million things in between? And how many times has he stared at the red-white-blue in his own hands and felt that potent blend of longing and loathing?

“Feels familiar,” Steve says, putting the shield down, well out of Bucky’s reach even if he breaks out of his binds.

“It’s yours.”

“I’m many things. Captain America isn’t one of them.”

“You used to be.”

“The things I used to be would fill a few books, Barnes. Doesn’t mean anything. Now, back to the matter at hand. I’m sure your friends are looking for you. They just won’t find you.”

Bucky says nothing. S.H.I.E.L.D will be looking for him. Maybe Tony too, if Clint and Natasha brought him in. Neither party should be underestimated, even with S.H.I.E.L.D considerably down in manpower and Tony dealing with his own shit. Someone will find him, eventually. Question is whether they can get through Steve to get to him. And if they do, then Steve will—he’ll—

Bucky doesn’t know what to feel, but he knows he can’t let Steve die.

Even if—no matter what he has done, it’s Steve.

It’s _Steve_.

Bucky yanks half-heartedly at his shackles. It doesn’t budge, and when he arches his neck to what he’s tied to, he finds a pair of cuffs with faintly glowing panels attached by chains to an intricately designed metal headboard. It looks sturdy. Bucky can break it.

“Don’t,” Steve says, and he has the gall to sound disapproving. “You know how this ends, Barnes.”

Bucky shoots him a glare and pulls again, putting all his strength into it. It’s pitiful, his body weakened and resistant, but even at his worst, Bucky packs more power than the average human. The headboard groans warningly, but the sound doesn’t hide Steve’s exasperated huff.

Bucky’s prepared for the pain, this time, but it doesn’t stop him from screaming, from writhing and arching off the bed in a vain attempt to escape the searing burn pulsing through his left arm.

It lasts until his scream turn high and ragged and his body’s one, endless shudder. Then it stops, the relief as shocking as the hurt.

Soft footsteps approach the bed. There are hands on him, suddenly, smoothing back his hair and circling his neck and palming his hips and finally, spreading his legs for a large, warm body to settle between them.

Bucky’s legs are unbound; he could attack Steve, get his thighs around and choke him. It might not work, but he can _try_ , except that his body’s still twitching and an attempt to even raise his legs makes them tremble pathetically.

“Do you enjoy that?” Steve asks, and Bucky pries his eyes open to glare at him, only to find genuine interest on Steve’s face.

“ _No_ ,” Bucky spits, panting for breath. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Similar things, I imagine, to what was wrong with your captain. And then some more.”

“There was nothing wrong with St—with you. You were the best man I knew.”

Bucky closes his eyes, the words bitter on his tongue; _the tragedy is in the verb tense_ , he read somewhere, a poem maybe, and he can feel it now, viscerally, the tragedy of what this man used to be and never again will be. He clings to it all the same, like a child to a battered toy or a torn blanket, to ruined things that carry the scent of a time when they weren’t ruined but safe and good and true.

“The man you knew is dead,” is all Steve says, placid like he doesn’t care one way or the other. It’s worse somehow, than anger or denial or guilt, anything that would tell Bucky he cares. “But this body’s resilient. What was the phrase you used—ah yes. I didn’t have the decency to die when I should have.

“Don’t,” Bucky snaps, holding Steve’s gaze and not faltering at the way they burn, twin points of life in those blank features. “Don’t you dare.”

“I’m not complaining,” Steve says, and he sound amused now, of all things. “But why aren’t you? Haven’t I proven, already, that I’m not pleasant company? Certainly not to you.”

He strokes a hand up Bucky’s flank as if to prove a point. He stops with a firm squeeze of Bucky’s upper thigh, fingers barely brushing anything sensitive, but Bucky shivers anyway, skin flaring at the memory of being held tight and used, of getting hard anyway.

Steve’s right but—

“You’re Steve,” Bucky whispers, feeling small and pathetic. “I thought you were dead. And now you’re here.”

“So you’ll take me any way you’ll have me?”

Bucky hates the considering note in Steve’s voice, the calculating way his eyes rove over Bucky, lingering on the seam where metal meets flesh and on what lies between his legs. It’s familiar and not at the same time. Maddening.

“No.”

It’s weak and not very convincing. Bucky doesn’t give Steve time to respond.

This time, Bucky does manage to get his legs off the mattress. He knows halfway in that it’s futile. He goes through with it anyway, winding his legs around Steve’s body, trying to twist. He expects pain again, for fire to race down metal and scorch his flesh.

All he gets is Steve wrestling him down with laughable ease and shifting to straddle him so that Bucky’s pinned under his heavy weight. Steve frowns down at him, not even breathing hard as Bucky heaves for air under him.

The backhand makes Bucky bleed, teeth cutting into lips and dripping red down his chin. A hand winds into his hair and forces him to look at Steve. Bucky does, licking absently at the blood on his mouth, unrepentant.

Steve grins.

The kiss is harsh, teeth clacking together before lips soften the blow. Steve sucks at Bucky’s mouth, laps up the blood he spilled like holy water and bites harder for more. He keeps Bucky down when he arches at the pain and licks into a mouth that parts breathlessly for him.

All Bucky can think that this is right. It’s different; Steve’s beard scrapes his skin, and he weighs more than he did during the war, but he tastes the same, his tongue curls around Bucky’s the same, his teeth nip his chin the same.

“Fuck.”

He’s shocked that it comes from Steve, not him. Steve’s red-mouthed and heavy-lidded when he shuffles back to perch between Bucky’s legs like he doesn’t care what happened last time, but his eyes are sharp despite their lust-darkened sheen. Steve licks his lips, and Bucky closes his eyes to stop himself from reacting. He tells himself this isn’t the Steve he knew, tries to hold on to what happened in the basement, the violation of it.

But when Steve cups his face, he can’t help but lean into it.

“You’re dangerous, Bucky Barnes.”

Bucky makes a wounded noise, heart throbbing at his name on Steve’s lips.

Steve thumbs his cheek like didn’t notice Bucky’s reaction, but one look at his face is enough to tell Bucky that he knows and is not about to forget any time soon. Then, all expression is gone, replaced by a blank look that’s at odds with his hand so gentle on Bucky’s face.

“I’m going to ask you some questions, Sergeant. And you’re going to answer them.”

In spite of all that’s happened, Bucky only has one response to that.

“Over my dead body, pal.”

Steve smiles. It sends a shiver through Bucky.

“Hey, now. Didn’t I tell you I can be persuasive?”

-

“This—is this how you—oh, fuck, oh, _oh_. S-stop!”

Steve, just like the myriad of times Bucky asked before, doesn’t stop. He does change the angle, makes it less intense, more of a tease that Bucky can—can’t ignore, not quite, but can grit his teeth and think through.

“You were saying?” Steve asks mildly.

“This how you persuade all your captives?”

Bucky’s proud of himself for making a full sentence. He hasn’t managed many of those since—since Steve—

“No.”

It could be a lie. Could be Steve trying to fuck with Bucky’s head. But if he’s honest, Steve doesn’t need to lie, and he got in Bucky’s head the moment he took off the mask.

Steve makes a considering noise and drives his fingers hard into Bucky’s prostate.

Bucky arches off the bed with a howl.

Steve eases off, and Bucky slumps down panting. His right wrist aches where the restraint has rubbed it raw. The left arm lies limp; Steve shocked him again before he started, said it wouldn’t do for Bucky to lose control in the middle. Bucky didn’t know, then, what was going to happen. He expected knives and fists and threats, not Steve’s fingers, slick with spit, being worked into his ass, all friction and pain-tinged pressure.

“I stick to the classics usually,” Steve tells him conversationally. He’s as composed as he was when he started this, only the tent in his pants telling a different story. “You know, needles under nails, a few fingertips chopped off. Canes on feet if I’m feeling particularly adventurous. I don’t get to go very far. People see the mask, and it’s enough.”

“G-guess I’m special then,” Bucky forces out between stuttering breaths, pouring every drop of willpower he has into not getting hard.

He knows a losing battle when he sees one, but that doesn’t mean he’s stopped fighting them. Couldn’t, growing up with a guy like Steve Rogers. Never thought he’d end up fighting one against Steve himself.

“You are,” Steve agrees easily, eyes crinkling as he grins. His smiles have too much teeth now. “Why, would you rather I take a knife to your dick?”

It’s accompanied by a feathery stroke over his cock. Bucky bites his lip to hold in a whine and breathes out harshly until he’s got some semblance of control. It takes him another moment to remember the question.

“No, thank you. You could just _stop_. Let me go.”

Steve shrugs, gaze intent on where his fingers are buried inside Bucky.

“I don’t want to.” A glance up at Bucky, blue eyes too damn sharp. “I don’t think you want me to either.”

“I don’t _want_ this,” Bucky snaps, or tries. His voice breaks halfway through, comes out high and pitiful.

Steve says nothing, doesn’t look at Bucky’s face again. But there’s a familiar quality to the furrow of his brow. Stubborn determination, the kind that led to back-alley brawls with boys twice their size and then, much later, to Nazis shooting at them with extreme prejudice. Bucky hasn’t been awake in this man’s presence for more than a handful of hours, and he’s already developed a complicated relationship with these echoes of the old Steve.

This Steve doesn’t even seem aware of them, and Bucky gets the feeling that he wouldn’t care. It’s like he’s acknowledged that he used to be Steve Rogers, a.k.a Captain America, and stashed the information away like one might the memory of an ill-fated first job. It was, it no longer is, end of story. Nothing to bother with. Nothing to deny. Bucky, the only exception.

It would be sweet, in another world. It would be kind.

Steve yanks out his fingers, leaving burning sensation in their wake. Bucky’s hole throbs, too wide and too empty, and he can’t swallow a groan this time, can’t help the bone-deep shudder of his flesh.

Steve doesn’t move from where he’s perched between Bucky’s legs, all folded up and comfortable like he doesn’t plan to move any time soon. And he doesn’t, just wraps the hand that was working Bucky’s ass around his cock instead. It’s not hard, not soft either, plumping up despite Bucky’s frantic mental effort. It hardens faster when Steve gives it a few good strokes, firm and dry, on the edge of chafing like Bucky’s always liked.

Steve idly places his thumb on Bucky’s slit, nail digging ever so gently into the delicate flesh, and asks a question.

“How did you find me?”

Bucky keeps his mouth shut, the same as he has when Steve asked this question before, first with a finger rubbing dry over his hole, then with one inside, another following too fucking soon, not enough spit to ease the burn.

He tries, he does.

Steve tightens his grips, digs his nail a little harder, until Bucky has no choice but to feel the threat in the sudden hollowness in his gut.

“We tracked your kills. I started following you after the last one.”

Steve nods, unsurprised like he knew all along. He doesn’t loosen his hold on Bucky’s dick, but he gives it a good stroke that burns on the right edge of painful, and Bucky tries not to treat it as a reward, but it sure feels like one. Pleasure sparks up his spine, and Bucky presses his lips tightly together. Steve sees it, smiles.

“Elaine Roberts, Georgia. Very nice lady, invited me in and all.” There’s no emotion in Steve when he talks about the woman he strangled to death while Bucky watched through a scope, wanting to pull the trigger but needing information, first. He wonders if it makes him just as bad that he’s glad, now, that he didn’t take the shot. “You’re good. I didn’t make you at all for the first few hours. Did you like it, watching me kill her?”

Bucky freezes. The question hits too close to what he was thinking of, but no, of course he didn’t, what kind of a sick fuck does—

Maybe he’d have liked it, if it was Hydra, if he knew it was Steve. Say what you will about vengeance, it had its purpose. Bucky could testify; his memories of the days between Steve’s fall and his own death are a jumbled blur, but he remembers the rage, like liquid fire in his veins. It kept him going. The only thing that did.

But this—what Steve’s asking—that’s not—

Steve makes an annoyed noise, and Bucky realizes it’s because his erection is flagging. He’s perversely pleased that _something_ can curb his body’s reaction to Steve, but that’s replaced by a whole other kind of pleasure when Steve works his huge paw up and down the softening length with smooth confidence, nothing less than a demand that Bucky give him what he wants.

And Bucky does, he always does, weak for Steve from when he was ten years old.

“I guess that’s a no,” Steve says over Bucky’s muffled moans, rubbing the damp head with his fingers in a way that borders on too much. “Alright then. Who was on the comms? Widow or Hawkeye?”

Bucky manages to pry his eyes open to gape at Steve.

“They’re the ones who came after you. We were gone by then, but they tried. Nice friends you have. Not leaving you to die is always a good sign.”

He doesn’t know if it’s intentional or not, but the words spear right through Bucky.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, closing his eyes again because he can’t look at Steve for this, can’t see what’s in his eyes.

“What for?” Steve asks almost absently, the hand not toying with Bucky’s cock slowly creeping up his thigh in slow, soothing strokes.

“For leaving you to die. For not looking for you. For not—not falling in the first place because it should’ve been me. I should’ve—”

A slap, and it’s gentle compared to the ones that bruised up Bucky’s face, but it’s on his fucking cock and Bucky _screams_. His hips shoot off the bed and is pinned down mercilessly as the same fingers that came down hard on his cock wrap around its length as if to ease the ache.

Bucky shudders through the pulses of pain, teeth bared and doing nothing to stop the whimpers that escape.

“You would have made an interesting Winter Soldier, I suppose,” Steve says, thoughtfully. “The arm would have served you nicely. I tore up my arm too, do you know that? The right one, almost severed at the elbow. It healed. I don’t remember it, but I’ve read the files. They were very curious about whether I’d have grown another arm like a fucking starfish if it had been severed. Suppose I’m lucky they didn’t decide to test the theory.”

It feels wrong to talk about this with Steve jerking him off all slow and lazy as a half-hearted interrogation tactic. Bucky feels sick. It’s easy, now, to ignore what’s happening down there and focus on the words. His guilt is good for something.

“I’m sorry, Steve, I’m _sorry_.”

Steve sighs and looks at Bucky’s dick like he’s contemplating hitting it again. Bucky’s stomach clenches, dread and anticipation. He knows it’s futile to hope Steve doesn’t notice that Bucky’s hard despite the pain.

“If you’re so sorry,” is all Steve says at the end, still jacking Bucky off, almost absently now, “why don’t you tell me whether S.H.I.E.L.D or the Avengers sent you?”

“Jesus Christ, Steve.”

“What?” Steve raises an eyebrow, and he looks so much like the asshole prancing around in Bucky’s memories that it hurts. “You owe them more than you owe me?”

“That’s not how it—fuck, this isn’t a conversation I want to have with your hand on my dick.”

“Would you rather I be inside you? I remember you very pliant when I was. Sweet little thing, would do anything I asked.”

Bucky turns away from the look in Steve’s eyes but can’t help moaning, remembering how it felt to be held down and fucked full until he didn’t know anything but Steve’s hands, Steve’s voice, until it was just him and Steve in a world trying to kill them both.

Steve’s hands leave him suddenly, and Bucky knows it’s what he wanted but the loss makes him whine anyway, chasing the touch with an aborted jerk of his hips. But Steve doesn’t go far, just leans over Bucky, easing himself down until his body is covering Bucky’s. It should be suffocating, and it is, Bucky’s breaths coming faster, shallower, but it makes something in him settle.

When Steve speaks, his lips brush Bucky’s ear. It’s low and intimate, making his gut clench.

“The man you knew is dead, Bucky Barnes. I’m all you’ve got. Now, you gonna be good for me and answer my questions?”

“Steve, _please_.”

Steve sighs, but it’s more theatrical than anything. He doesn’t sound that unhappy.

“Alright then.”

He pulls back, once again kneeling between Bucky’s legs. Steve spreads them wider, half on his thighs, and pulls Bucky down as much as the restraints allow. Bucky watches limply as Steve sucks wetly on two of his own fingers and slides them inside Bucky’s ass. He doesn’t waste time, pressing in on his prostate, and it’s hard not to react, to not clench and squirm around his fingers.

“S.H.I.E.L.D or Avengers?”

Bucky shakes his head. Steve rubs harder, and it’s evident all too soon that he was only playing around before—teasing and toying, testing the waters, testing Bucky. He’s not playing now.

The fingers press and rub and tug, never quite leaving that spot, keeping up an endless cascade of sensation from which there’s no escape. Bucky writhes for him like a puppet on a string, moaning and panting and begging, and he hates that he doesn’t know if he’s moving away from or into Steve’s hand.

Steve’s other hand returns to Bucky’s cock, jerking him off in perfect counterpoint to the thrust of his fingers.

He’s close embarrassingly fast, stomach muscles tightening and thighs straining as he tries and fails not to move, to chase the pleasure. He’s there at the edge, stroked to the peak by Steve’s clever hands, and all he needs—just a little—

Bucky shouts, outraged, when Steve just _stops_.

In a breath, in a moment between the sound leaving his lips and his body slumping on the bed, Bucky knows he’s well and truly fucked. There’s no accompanying shock to the realization; it was waiting in the wings since the moment he saw Steve for what he was.

“Barnes,” Steve says, and the name’s wrong coming from that mouth, but Bucky doesn’t have the strength to protest. “Tell me.”

“You know the answer,” Bucky says, and he thinks he should be horrified by how he sounds, hoarse and wrecked and _tired_.

“I do. But I still want to hear you say it.”

That makes it easier, somehow.

“S.H.I.E.L.D.”

Steve’s smile is triumphant. He doesn’t look away from Bucky, pinning from under the force of all that intensity.

“Atta boy,” he murmurs, tightening his grip on Bucky’s dick and crooking the fingers inside him. And this time, Steve doesn’t stop until Bucky arching off the bed, clenching around his fingers as he spills messily on them both.

He’s shaking after it’s wrung him out, and Steve doesn’t help, rubbing the pads of his fingers along Bucky’s insides in slow, maddening circles. His hand remains loose around Bucky’s cock, still half-hard.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“Sh-shut the fuck up.”

Steve squeezes him, not painfully, but more than enough to spark through his nerves with Bucky still so sensitive. He moans, twisting away instinctively before forcing himself to stay still. He can’t escape Steve, not with his arm out of commission and his body weak from the drugs. And he doesn’t know if he wants to when it might mean he’ll never see Steve again.

God, this is fucked up.

“We’re not done yet. What does S.H.I.E.L.D want from me? Their own pet assassin?”

Bucky shakes his head, and the truth is that he doesn’t fucking know, but it doesn’t rob him of conviction. No one’s using Steve again.

“Information?” Steve asks. He starts moving his hands again, slowly pumping them in and out of Bucky, stroking his cock with his own come slicking the way, and it’s all so much, too much, and Bucky can’t answer, can’t even the remember the question.

Steve doesn’t let up; he tugs roughly at Bucky’s rim so it burns with the stretch, rubs his prostate until his entire ass feels like one open wound, and fists his cock as it fills up in his grip. Bucky’s body feels like a finely tuned instrument, played to the whims of a capricious master.

“What did you want from me?” Steve waits, casually fucking Bucky up as he does, but his patience doesn’t last forever. A flick to the sensitive cockhead makes Bucky shouts weakly. “Answer me, Sergeant.”

“I don’t—I don’t fucking know. Capture, not kill. Preferably. Fury wanted to talk to you.”

Steve hums consideringly and takes his hand off Bucky’s cock. The sudden lack makes him whine, hips chasing the touch only to have another finger thrust into him, prying him open even wider.

“Can you come just like this?”

Spread out on three fingers that are longer and thicker than anything that’s been inside him since his seventy-year nap, Bucky writhes like a wanton whore and figures that’s answer enough.

“One last question,” Steve tells him, stroking Bucky’s thighs and hips and avoiding even the barest brush on his cock. “If I let you go, will they send you after me again?”

The possibility there—of release, of freedom—sinks into him heavily. He doesn’t know what to think, and Steve’s fingers twisting inside of him don’t help. The answer, at least, he can give honestly, guiltlessly.

“I don’t know.”

Steve looks at him a long time, considering. His fingers don’t still for even a second.

“I believe you,” is the verdict, followed by a small, bright smile that seems to shine light all the way down to Bucky’s fractured soul. It’s not fair that Steve can look like that, that he can make Bucky feel like this with a smile that might not even be real. It’s not like Bucky can tell anymore. “I think that deserves a reward, don’t you?”

Bucky expects another orgasm torn out of him by relentless hands.

What he gets is Steve shifting to lie beside him and turning Bucky to face him. His leg is hiked up over Steve’s hips, leaving him exposed for the fingers that slide back in to fill the gaping emptiness they left.

What he gets is Steve’s mouth on his and a hand tangling in his hair, gripping hard and tugging just right.

Bucky tells himself he shouldn’t, because this isn’t the Steve he knew and he’s betraying S.H.I.E.L.D and Natasha and everyone he knows in this new madhouse of a world, but a flick of Steve’s tongue is all it takes to make him melt into the kiss. He opens his mouth for Steve to taste and grinds down on the fingers fucking him wide. He lets Steve inside, lets him pull at his hair and scrape nails through his scalp, lets him spread his fingers and drive them hard against his prostate.

He comes like that, moaning into Steve’s mouth and riding his fingers until his cock twitches empty. It’s a fresh mess on top of the one already cooling on Bucky’s skin, but there’s an odd kind of satisfaction that comes from seeing his release on Steve’s clothes, standing out starkly on the dark fabric.

Steve notices too, when he stops kissing Bucky and pulls back. His mouth quirks into an odd half-smile, and he clambers off the bed. Bucky makes a vague, half-formed noise at the sudden absence, fingers twitching in their binds like they want to reach out and tug Steve back. It’s easier not to think when Steve’s there bodily wiping his mind; like this, alone, Bucky’s powerless not to lend his mind go down a path of _what have I done_.

But Steve’s quick to come back, having stripped in the few moments Bucky took to close his eyes and breathe through the tightening of his rib cage, and he’s so fucking warm when he presses against Bucky’s bare skin. Steve’s run hot ever since the serum, and Bucky couldn’t get enough of it in the war, when there seemed to be ice living in his veins, and it’s the same now, maybe worse. He presses close greedily, and he can almost fool himself that this is just the two of them in one of their games, play-pretend with ropes and burns, and he’ll wake up, and Steve will be dressed in his ridiculous flag costume, and Bucky will slink in the shadows, watching his six as he always did.

Teeth sink into his lower lip, breaking skin in a flash of sharp pain. Bucky tenses with a guttural groan, need burning low in his gut despite his cock lying limp and spent between his legs. Steve licks at the blood and sucks at the cut until the pain flares again, and then he pulls back with a satisfied hum. Bucky opens his eyes and finds himself staring into a face that’s as familiar as it is alien, and yeah, that illusion was never going to last.

Steve doesn’t look away from Bucky, traps him in a pool of blue, even as he reaches over them to undo the restraint on Bucky’s right hand.

Fucked out and half-gone he may be, but Bucky still notices that all it takes is a touch of Steve’s for the cuff to split. Biometrics of some sort, then, and Bucky would be disappointed, except that escape hasn’t been a looming concern since he realized who his captor truly is. He wants to, of course, but not without Steve. Never again.

He notices with a start that Steve’s watching him, eyes sharp and calculating as Bucky clenches his fist and rotates his wrist to ease the stiffness. Simultaneous is the realization that he could have made a move with Steve bare and vulnerable beside him, could have tried to escape. It’s clearly what Steve was expecting, what he’s braced for. Bucky knows he wouldn’t have got anywhere with it, but he could have tried.

It would have meant something, he knows, if he tried.

Steve’s lips tilt into a slow, sly smile that spreads warmth through Bucky’s heart even as it makes a small, animal part of him shy away. It says something about him that both make him perk up like a bitch in heat, breath coming a little faster as Steve runs a hand along his side.

“Turn over,” Steve orders in that pleased, proud voice. “Hands and knees.”

It’s awkward with his left hand still cuffed, but Steve helps, arranging Bucky as he pleases. His right hand is bound again the moment Steve’s got him positioned the way he wants. Bucky struggles weakly, but Steve cuffs the side of his head and he subsides with a whimper.

It’s more elbows and knees than hands and knees in the end, and Bucky’s hyperaware of the way his ass is pushed out, still wet and open from Steve’s fingers.

Steve leaves the bed again, and Bucky doesn’t even try to hold back his whine. There’s a hushing sound threaded with amusement, and Steve’s hand comes down on his ass in a light swat that makes Bucky shudder and arch up. Fingers knead the sting, once, twice, before falling away, leaving Bucky to bite back another needy moan.

There are wet sounds, familiar ones, and Steve’s back again, knocking Bucky’s legs further apart to make space for himself between them. His cock, slick with something better than spit, slides between Bucky’s cheeks, hard and hot and fucking huge, and he knows he can take it, has taken it before, so many times, but there’s still a frisson of fear that goes through him when faced so intimately with the sheer size of the thing. And it has been a long time, literal decades, and Bucky clenches all over at the thought of being stuffed full till he’s choking on it.

Steve doesn’t thrust inside like Bucky’s half-expecting him to. Instead, he leans over Bucky, covering him with his body, his weight carefully kept off him but not so much that Bucky doesn’t feel small and damn near delicate under Steve. It’s strange because Steve after the serum was a huge guy but in a trim sort of way—broad shoulders and thick thighs with a slim waist and a figure a pin-up girl would die for. Now, he’s a fucking mountain, muscles upon muscles, nothing trim or soft about him anymore.

Bucky doesn’t know how to feel about that. He misses the familiarity of that Steve, but being trapped under this behemoth of a man is doing things to the basest parts of him.

He wonders, though, about what Hydra put him through, the kind of physical conditioning Steve had to endure to look like he does now. The serum kept him strong and muscled with virtually no exercise. He shudders to image the strength in him now, and he doesn’t know whether it’s fear or desire. Feels like a thin line.

Steve’s lips brush his nape, tender and sweet in that moment before teeth sink deep. Bucky cries out, shaking as he struggles to stay still, hanging from Steve’s teeth as he licks and nibbles at the red-hot wound. Blood trickles down the sides of Bucky’s neck, mingling with sweat, but Steve laps it all up, sucking wet and rough at the sides of Bucky’s throat, marking him up.

“Breathe,” Steve murmurs before he withdraws, and Bucky barely has a moment to obey before the cock teasing him starts pressing in. Blunt pressure at his hole, and resistance because two of Steve’s fingers and some spit is far from enough to prepare him for his cock, and then Steve’s sliding inside, breaking Bucky open as he fills him in one, brutal thrust.

Bucky doesn’t have the air to scream, but he tries anyway, mouth open soundlessly, every fiber in him trembling as his body tries to adjust to the intrusion. Steve doesn’t give him the time, just pulls out and fucks back in, a searing line of painful heat inside Bucky. It hurts like a bitch, hot and pulsing, and Bucky swears around a moan, breath hitching when Steve does it again.

And again and again and _again_ –

“ _Steve_ ,” Bucky manages, barely recognizing his own voice gone high and reedy, desperation ringing in every syllable.

Steve’s only acknowledgment is to tangle his hand in Bucky’s overgrown hair and pull his head back, far enough that each thrust forces another sound out of him. Guttural groans and keening cries, mangled gasps of Steve’s name, curses that fall on deaf years, pleas that don’t know whether they’re asking for more or begging for mercy—Steve fucks it all out of him, and Bucky doesn’t take it quietly, but he takes it anyway.

Steve changes his angle and plows right into his prostate, and the abused bundle of nerves start throbbing from Steve’s monster of a cock ramming right into it. Bucky squirms, knowing he can’t get away but helpless not to try because it’s too much, all of it, Steve’s girth stretching him obscenely wide, the length of him going deeper than Bucky can even remember, and it’s burning him up, tearing him at the seams, and he’s gonna fly apart any moment, little bits of Bucky scattering everywhere.

There’s a grunt from Steve, the only sound he’s made aside from labored breathing, and Bucky hates how it goes right to his cock. It’s hard, and Bucky doesn’t remember when that happened, only that of all the things Zola’s goddamn serum did to him, this is the most mixed of blessings.

It proves damn near impossible to ignore his dick once it’s wormed its way into his awareness. It’s dripping, again, bouncing between his legs each time Steve’s hips slam into him. Bucky wants to grind down against the mattress, but Steve’s got a death grip on his side, keeping him there on his knees, spread wide open to take Steve’s cock.

“Steve,” he calls again, panting out the word and clenching his ass around Steve’s cock in a bid for attention. It backfires, spectacularly, Bucky’s breath stuttering in his lungs as he squirms around all that _fullness_. Steve’s burning, scorching Bucky inside and out, branding him deep.

Without warning, Steve pushes all the way in and stays there, leaning over Bucky and pushing their hips together like he can crawl deeper into him.

“What do you want, Barnes?”

The name sluices over his skin like ice-cold water.

“No, please, don’t—Bucky, call me, _please_ , Steve.”

The silence from Steve manages to be surprised.

“Alright,” comes the soft reply. “What do you want, Bucky?”

Bucky shudders violently, chest tightening painfully at the name on Steve’s lips. It’s Steve, his mouth and his voice, and even without any of the familiarity born of twenty decades spent attached at the hip, Bucky knows that sound deep in his soul.

He forgets what he wanted, and Steve starts moving again, still leaning over Bucky, covering him with heat and sweat as Steve grinds into him, pulling out a scant inch or two before pushing back inside, somehow making that fraction of a length feel a mile long. It drives Bucky mad, gets him gasping and writhing, fucking drooling into the sheets as Steve ruts against him.

“T-touch me,” he manages after an eternity of burning up with nowhere to go, trapped on Steve’s cock, his hands, his mouth brushing open over Bucky’s spine.

Steve hums, the fucking asshole, and sucks wet kisses up Bucky’s back so he can speak close to his ear.

“Where?”

“Bastard, you know where, come _on_.”

That gets him a slap on the ass, and joke’s on Steve because Bucky just arches into it, squirming in a wordless plea for more. He gets it, too, Steve’s hand coming down hard on his cheeks, setting fire to his skin. He doesn’t stop fucking Bucky for even a second of it, thrusting and rolling his hips like he wants to touch every inch of flesh inside and leave it marked forever.

“I want to hear you say it,” Steve says eventually, once Bucky’s too much of a mess to do anything but whimper each time a fresh handprint forms on his ass. “Want you to beg me touch you, let you come. Come on, Buck, let me hear you.”

It’s the _Buck_ —soft and lightly mocking, but so fucking sweet on ears that haven’t heard it in forever—that does it.

Bucky sobs, tears he’s been blinking back finally spilling forth, and gives Steve everything he wants.

-

He wakes, and for a moment, everything’s soft and warm and cozy. He pulls the covers tighter around himself and stretches out a leg, settling into a position that makes every inch of him feel heavenly.

The bliss lasts a second before the numerous aches start to register. His face hurts, his hands feel stiff, and his wrists sting like a bitch, but it’s his ass that propels him from drowsy confusion to growing awareness. It hurts inside and out; his cheeks are pulsing with dull pain, his hole is sore and feels all puffed up, and inside, there’s this deep, throbbing ache that he hasn’t felt in a damn long time and reminds him both of hours spent fucking like wild beasts and twice that time spent bitching about the same. Steve used to smile, half-regretful, but mostly just fucking smug, hungry eyes drinking in what he did to Bucky.

Steve—

He remembers between one breath and the other, the last of sleep fleeing. He sits up so fast his head spins, and only once the vertigo passes does he notice that he’s not restrained.

Sure, he’s naked like when he woke up to Steve, but there are no fancy handcuffs on his wrists and his left arm is fully functional. There’s an ominous whirr when he moves it, concentrated near the plates on his forearm, but he figures it’s natural that being shocked whenever Steve damn well pleased left some damage. Nothing Tony can’t handle, hopefully.

He knows he’s alone. He’s unrestrained and covered in an actual goddamn blanket, and he knows, with a surety that doesn’t come entirely from logic or reasoning, that Steve’s long gone.

Last Bucky remembers is being fucked stupid and left dripping, Steve rolling out of bed with a gentle pat on Bucky’s ass that he chose to interpret as affectionate. There are blurred memories of hands on his body, of something wet being dragged across his skin, of blue eyes peering down at him, of fingers slipping inside him and making him squirm, but he doesn’t know how much of that was real and how much a dream. Some of it must have happened, if only because he’s clean and tucked in rather than lying in a mess of his and Steve’s come.

He doesn’t know whether he fell asleep or was drugged again. And he doesn’t know if any of that matters when Steve’s _gone_.

Bucky tugs the blankets back up, indulging in a moment of childish comfort. They don’t smell like Steve. They don’t smell like anything except clothes washed in detergent and left to gather dust in some corner of a shelf. He clings to them anyway, wrapping himself in them and imagining Steve covering Bucky with them, pulling the edges up to tuck them under his chin the way he used to do for Steve, in another lifetime.

He almost doesn’t notice the note, except that pulling at the sheets shakes it loose, and he catches the movement at the corner of his eye.

It’s plain white paper. Black ink and a handwriting so familiar that seeing it is like a bolt to his heart all over again. He doesn’t know how he can see Steve back from his icy grave and be bruised from his cruel touch but still be shocked that his writing hasn’t changed from that of the headstrong kid from Brooklyn whose hands didn’t quite fit the rest of him.

 _Dear Sergeant_ , it starts, and Bucky doesn’t know how long he reads just those two words over and over and over. He can hear them in Steve’s voice, quiet and sardonic, a sharp barb delivered with a smile and a wink.

_Dear Sergeant,_

_I hate to leave you like this. You look so sweet. They shouldn’t have put the star on you. The killing’s not what you’re made for. We both know where you truly belong, don’t we?_

_The drugs will wear off soon, but I’ll be long gone by the time you read this. You get a free pass, just this once, because you were so good for me. Don’t look for me. Don’t try to hunt me down. Run. And pray that we never meet again because if we do, I won’t let you go a second time, Bucky Barnes._

_\- S_

_P.S. You have the sweetest, tightest hole I’ve ever fucked. The dreams didn’t do you justice._

The words blur, and it takes Bucky a long time to realize it’s because his hand is shaking violently.

**Author's Note:**

> I’d love to hear your thoughts!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [collab: voxofthevoid](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23361448) by [kocuria-visuals (kocuria)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kocuria/pseuds/kocuria-visuals)




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